Mobile phone antennas typically are used by mobile phones to receive and transmit data. The data may include frame data, encoding data and other relevant data. These data are typically sent using radio signals. These data typically control the radio hardware in the phone and are the vehicles by which the phone talks to the base stations.
Generally, this data is received and transmitted using typical hardware and specialized software to convert the data into a radio signal and transmit the data as a radio signal. The form of these data evolves over time. One reason for the near-constant flux in the formatting of the data is that standards bodies are constantly standardizing increases in speed and power efficiency in mobile phones and other related devices.
When changes are made to the software protocol stack—i.e., the software that allows the phone to receive and transmit signals, as well as convert digital signals to analog signals and vice versa—the updated protocol stack must be continually validated with different providers of base stations. This validation preferably maintains the quality of transmission of the mobile phone. For example, when a known system such as HSDPA1 (High Speed Data Packet Access) is added to the protocol stack, the phone manufacturer must ensure that the phone continues to work with base stations that are not HSDPA compliant. 1 High Speed Downlink Packet Access—HSDPA improves system capacity and increases user data rates in the downlink direction, that is, transmission from the Radio Access Network to the mobile terminal.
There are three main sets of testing that a mobile phone undergoes before release to market—GCF Testing—Global Certification Forum testing, that proves that the phone works with present standards, RRM Testing—Radio Resource Management which has been added by equipment manufacturers to ensure the mobile phone works in a practical setting, and IOT Testing—Interoperability testing which is provided by network equipment manufacturers to ensure that new modems in mobile phones will operate correctly with their network equipment. Passing these tests forms a large part of improving a protocol stack's performance.
Typically, networking testing equipment is used to simulate conditions for testing mobile phones. Once the simulated tests are passed, field testing may be done. Field testing typically requires live network testing whereby the phone is tested in various scenarios against the network operator's live equipment.
Certain operations such as making a phone call from a mobile phone are typically easy to implement and, accordingly, the tests are usually passed. However, tests related to other aspects of mobile phone operation such as switching over from one cell to another, power control of the mobile phone, etc. are not as easily passed.
This testing is done for virtually every new mobile phone that is produced. Yet, when there is a test failure it typically requires an expert to be available to diagnose and “debug”—i.e., determine and correct the source of—the problem.
In order to help the expert debug the phone, the mobile phone typically produces logging data in a proprietary format which is then output normally over a UART or USB to a proprietary logging application. The network equipment will produce logging data again in a format proprietary to the equipment manufacturer. It is then required for the expert to try and align this logging output and determine where the phone failed the test. Further when doing live network testing, it is rare that the logging from the network equipment is available. In such circumstances, the expert typically is required to debug the phone just using information available from the phone itself.
In one example of a conventional test, when the network equipment sends a “reduce power” signal to the mobile phone, perhaps to conserve power consumption in the mobile phone, this command can be logged at the network equipment side. Thus, the network equipment side will know that it sent the message, but the network equipment will not know how the message was interpreted by the mobile phone other than, possibly, information relating to the power measurement coming from the phone.
These problems and other problems are present in conventional systems and methods for bringing a mobile phone to market.
It would be desirable to directly transmit messages from the mobile phone to the network testing equipment in order to more closely monitor the mobile phone's reaction to simulated test data.